Chillin'

So after a hard day of playing we came in to watch a movie and next think I knew, Kate had assumed the position in the zero-gravity chair and was nibbling on mints. She looked so adorable I had to take one last picture :)

Summer Fun at Grandma's

We started to hatch ducks in my 2nd grade classroom. They hatched two days after school got out. Four hatched and three survived. Kate thought that was great fun. She was laughing and quacking up a storm with the scared ducks. Her hands fit perfectly around their little necks too! I love pictures like this that show pure joy on a child's face! After all the duck excitement we played on Grandma's waterslide. Kate was fearless this year going down. I caught Jared playing outdoorsman. You've gotta love the look of "getting caught" on his face.

The Gila Family Temple

After Uncle Ned's funeral, Karen and I hung out with Harmon's and visited The Gila Valley temple before heading home. Guess who we saw as we were leaving the temple? Von Richardson formerly of Animas, (Charles and Ilene's son) and his wife. Small World!

Robin's Visit

My sister Robin was able to come up to Salt Lake for my niece Kaila Graves's wedding. We were trying to get the beautiful flowers on temple square. We also took our picture as immigrants in the JSB Family History Center. Obviously, the trip across the ocean wasn't too hard on Robin. Way too chipper! If you want to see pictures of Kaila's wedding and the totally awesome cake we made out of sheets of chocolate you have to go to Karen's blog.

Easter Happiness in St. George

It was beautiful weather and it seemed to bring out the best in everyone. Happy times!

Piano Recital

For those family members that missed the latest piano recital of Lucinda and Sarah Sowards here they are posing at the piano after the recital. Don't feel too bad, Connie missed most of it too. She was out in the hall with very noisy Jared. The girls are quite accomplished young ladies.

The Secret Lives of Teachers

About 15 people from my school went down to Las Vegas for a Kagan (school stuff) training. One first grade teacher is in love with Donny Osmond and two teachers went to see the Donnie and Marie show ($250 per person). They took millions of pictures with my camera (they left theirs at home) and bought T-shirts and sat starry eyed in our workshops for the next two days. This woman, Tammy, has been in love with Donny her whole life. She once got to go to a wedding reception where half the wedding party was the Osmond family and she shook Donny's hand in line. It's what she lives for and now she can die happy...she saw his concert and sleeps in his T-shirt. She's almost my age and it made me feel good to know there are other crazies in the world. She walks around school now with a constant smile and we know what she's thinking about. LOL

Connie the Amazing!

Not only does Connie wrestle 5 kids, keep Bishop Sowards fed and ironed, run fund raisers at the elementary school but she finds time to run down to my school and put up fabulous bulletin boards for me. Look at the size of this box of chocolates. It was huge..about 3 feet high it was filled with Little Debbie snack cakes in silver cupcake tins that made it look like a box of GIANT chocolates. The kids went crazy over it and insisted on eating a stale chocolate from the box 2 weeks later. I let them. Thanks Conners for making me "look good"!

Sexy Lady Brabra

6th Sense

I will always be amazed what pets let little children get away with that they don't let adults get away with. Kate was taking our cat Toast by the sides of the face and forcing her head around so she could look the cat in the face. Then she proceeded to point to the cat's eyes, her eyes, cat's nose, her nose. Toast let Kate mess with her repeatedly over and over again. When she turned her head away she then let Kate grab the sides of her face and turn her back. AMAZING! Animals have a 6th sense around babies I'm sure of it. My Grandmother, Dorothy Murial Norman Capener told me a story of her 5th birthday. Her mother had made her a brand new apron WITH A POCKET! That was her one and only present back in 1907. She was so excited she ran outside to show her Daddy. He had just opened the gate to let all the horses out to graze. The pack of horse was charging straight for her. She stopped dead in her tracks. The lead horse spotted her and jumped to the left and all the other horses blindly followed the first horse. She was left standing in a cloud of dust but untouched. Animals just have this 6th sense about little children.
(not a very glamourous setting for these pictures...but you have to click on the pics to enlarge them and see how cute Kate was with Toast).